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KAMLA SAYS – Name the Grand Stand after Sparrow – What it needs next
COMMENTARY
Julian Rogers – Monday, October 19th, 2026
Mia Mottley’s call for “Slave” to join the CXC syllabus drew the headlines from Sparrow’s farewell. But the Prime Minister who spoke after her, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, said two things that matter just as much, and she deserves the same careful reading.
She began with a joke she shares with Mottley, that neither of them could ever have made a career as a singer, and then settled into a tribute better organised than most eulogies. Sparrow, she said, was an icon, an ambassador, a storyteller and a social commentator. Then came the line I would put on a wall. Calypso, she said, was “our newspaper”, “our parliament”, “our theatre”, “our comedy”, “our protest” and “our history book”
It is not every day that a head of government concedes that the real parliament sat in a tent. She meant it as a compliment to both institutions, and the point is sound. A great many people learned how the country saw itself from calypsonians.
Then she turned to education, which she said has always had a special meaning for her.
She grew up on calypso because her mother had a roti shop with a jukebox, and Sparrow’s advice to children about going to school and learning well was part of the soundtrack. She said it carried a serious message, that “education gives our children the power to change their circumstances,” and that Sparrow could take a national issue and put it into words ordinary people remembered. His words, she said, travelled “from the calypso tent into the classroom and into the home”. That is exactly the argument for putting him on the CXC syllabus, made by the person who now has to help deliver it.
She also said something about him that applies to the whole region: “He never had to become less Caribbean in order to become international.”
She noted his honours, including the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, conferred in 2014 during her first tenure as Prime Minister. Then came the two commitments. On the syllabus, she told Mottley that Trinidad and Tobago would “work with you and the others in the CARICOM to make your suggestion become a reality.
“On the monument, she announced that the Grand Stand at the Queen’s Park Savannah will be refurbished and will bear the name of Dr Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow. The Savannah is the open ground at the heart of Carnival in Port of Spain, and it is an apt place for the name of a man who sang Carnival into the world. Both commitments are generous. Neither has a date. I say that without criticism, because a funeral is for sentiment, and a government that announces a grandstand in the same breath as a pledge on the curriculum has at least picked two things worth doing. But the next stage is administrative, and administration needs three things the speech did not supply: an owner, a deadline and a budget.
So here is what I would ask of her government.
First, name the lead ministry for the CXC proposal and put it on the agenda of the next CARICOM Heads of Government meeting, in writing, with Mottley’s name beside hers.
Second, publish a timetable and a cost for the refurbishment, and say whether it will be ready for Carnival in February.
Third, link the two. A renamed grandstand will be seen by Carnival crowds. A teaching kit with the licensed recordings, the history and the lesson plans will be seen by every child in the region. If the government can do the first, it can fund the second.
Mottley asked for a syllabus. Persad-Bissessar offered a building. The sensible reading is that they are one project: the place where the crowd gathers and the place where the child learns.
“The king has left the stage, but the song goes on,” she said at the close. Songs do not go on by themselves. They need schools, archives and a budget line.
Julian Rogers is founder and publisher of Caribbean Bridges. Read more at caribbeanbridges.substack.com